All back talk has the same goal, whether it is confrontational or not. The goal is parent—or teacher—control: gaining power and attention.

Backtalk is any noncompliant behavior

Which of the following statements applies to inmates in correctional institutions (jails)?

1. …tries to “butter you up in order to get favors.”

2. …may fake illness to get what they want.

3. …tries to change the subject to avoid consequences.

4. …flatters, acts friendly, inflates your ego to make you emotionally dependent on his or her approval.

5. …does favors for you in order to manipulate you into breaking or changing rules.

6. …asks to be excused just this one time; won’t do it again.

7. …tries to get different people to say “yes” when the answer is always “no” in order to follow rules.

8. …tries to fast talk–guide–you  into ignoring rules.

9. …will take advantage of your depression, carelessness or other weakness.

10. ..tries to get you on an equal basis rather than allow you to be the boss.

11. ..hates being told what to do.

Yes, all of the above are “games inmates play” to get you to lose focus, give them your authority, and take control without responsibility for consequences.

Is it a coincidence that these behaviors start in childhood? Are you rewarding your child’s wrong choices by falling for this stuff?

Discipline is consistent consequences.

If a child gets away without consequences, we are rewarding bad behavior. We only help him or her to perfect his manipulative skills such as those above, drama and lying.

The above behaviors were all taken from The Art of the Con: Avoiding Offender Manipulation, by Gary Cornelius, published by The American Correctional Association, Alexandria, Virginia.

Stress-free Discipline gives a step-by-step plan to relieve stress on you and your child while keeping gentle pressure on the child to make right choices.

Remember, what’s OK is the enemy of what’s best.

“Watching television for two to three hours or more per day is linked to significantly higher risks of developing diabetes and heart disease and dying from all causes, according to a new analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health.” (June 15, Journal of the American Medical Association.)

If it were just health, some parents would ignore the need to change TV habits.  But wait! Thinking ability is also at risk here.

A New Yorker study indicates that “A reader learns about the world and imagines it differently from the way a viewer does; according to some…a reader and a viewer even think differently.” (Crain, 2007, 135)

 In several cited studies, illiterates resisted giving definitions of words, grouping like objects, and making logical inferences about hypothetical situations. (Crain, 2007, 137) Moreover, “in an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon…” (Crain, 138) 

Detailed and consistent decline in reading and thus in thinking ability have been reported by the National Endowment for the Arts…

It is much harder to compare viewpoints and ideas between streaming media than to analyze the written word.

Juxtaposed images give the impression of cause and effect where none exists. Logical thinking and learning words become a strain.  Social and communication skills suffer.  Experienced teachers and social workers have noted the trend.  Teamwork, highly valued in the global marketplace and in parenting, is suffering.

According to the scholars Jack Goody and Ian Watt, Crain says, (2007, 138) “it is only in a literate culture that the past’s inconsistencies have to be accounted for, a process that encourages skepticism and forces history to diverge from myth.”  My experience on the Navajo Reservation corroborates all of the above.

Recall is also enhanced by reading, as opposed to merely viewing. Moreover, viewers from the age of eight to sixteen months begin loosing word power for every hour of baby DVD’s and videos they watch daily, according to Crain.

Data on more than a million students worldwide by Micha Razel “found ‘little room for doubt’ that television worsened performance in reading, science and math.” (Crain, 2007, 138)

The N.E.A. reported recently that “readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer.” (Crain, 2007, 139)  

If parents cannot read, their children will not be encouraged to learn more than the minimum to get by.  Thus, each generation will become more ignorant.

Apply the Bingo test:  is reading, good health and the ability to live a richer, fuller life worth changing your TV habits? 

Oh yes, we do need to relax from a stressful day of work, and TV will reward us with entertainments which either stimulate or sedate us…just like addictions will. 

According to Dr. Archibald Hart, writing in Healing Life’s Hidden Addictions, “…two basic drives or fundamental needs can be behind all addictions:  excitement seeking and tension reducing…These two drives are directly related to the two basic categories of drugs (stimulants and tranquilizers)…” (p. 57)

 These psychological needs play a “significant role even in non-chemical addictions.”

Hart says that “Since the function of an addiction is to place a buffer between ourselves and our awareness of feelings, wrenching the buffer away results in increased anxiety…”  Hmmm.  How uncomfortable do we get  when we miss our favorite program?  How many of us are truly listening to our children or our body or our felt needs during those hypnotic sessions with streaming media or facebook? 

Do we really need exercise after being chained to a computer all day, or a couch potatoe session?  Do we need real rest or merely a change of activity?

Moms, Dads, and teachers:  Stress-free Discipline of our children will relieve our stress as it happens, and it will provide rewarding, consistent consequences for our children’s right and poor choices of the day (or period).  The reward is time spent with us on educational, interpersonal activities.  Those activities may be a game of basketball ourtside, spell-down baseball inside, or learning good manners at a nice restaurant!

Let’s apply the Bingo test to those activities.  Is what I am doing now building skills and bonding and family teamwork for the long term?  Teachers, are your present choices of stress-relief really working for your body?

Personal financial hardship is only one cost of  divorce. 

According to CitizenLink.org, a study done by the Institute for American Values has found that the breakdown of families costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion yearly.  The national, state and local costs–which add up to more than $1 trillion over the last decade–are caused, in part, by high poverty rates of single, female-headed households, which lead to higher spending on welfare, criminal justice and education programs.” (Williams, 2008, 1) 

What could the government do with a trillion dollars to create jobs and a better quality of life?  What could parents do with a little more in their bank account and lower taxes for preventable problems?  This is not rocket science.  It has to do with self-control and intelligent work toward family health.

The human cost of family breakup cannot be calculated.  While the average mother looses quality of life as she enters the ranks of the poor, there are many hidden costs.  If she got a divorce wanting control and freedom, her impulse control problems have bad consequences.  She is so overwhelmed with an additional work load–an impossible blend of the need to provide adequate income and good parenting–that she is unable to discipline her children or teach them essential skills. 

Happiness research by Dr. Ed. Diener of the University of Illinois indicates that we are most happy when our ability and the task at hand are closely matched.(see www.psych.uluc.edu/~ediener/research/research.html).  Poor parents can only be miserable, single parents are all stressed, and both children and parents suffer the kind of pressures which lead to poor health, depression, dysfunction, violence and full-blown mental illness.

Self control issues–impulse control problems–pass from parent to child, and “may predict health problems, less financial stability and a criminal record by adulthood…a survey of more than 1,000 children who were studied from birth to age 32, found that kids who scored lowest on measures of self-control…were roughly three times as likely by adulthood to report to having multiple health problems and addictions, earning less than $20,000 a year, becoming a single parent or committing a crime than kids with the most self-control.  

The good news is that self-control can be learned. (TIME, February 7, 2011)

What parents want to curse their child to an unhappy, unhealthy and dysfunctional life?  Yet, according to Stanley Bippus, Superintendent of Central Consolidated School District, Farmington, NM, “The primary cause of most behavior and student achievement problems in the public school system is irresponsible and/or incompetent parents…No child is more handicapped that one whose parents don’t understand and accept the responsibilities of parenthood.  Poor parents destroy the lives of more children in this country than drugs, alcohol and gangs combined.”  (published in the Farmington Daily Times, 9/4/1994)

Parenting is the hardest job we will ever do, in my opinion.  The consequences of poor parenting have the largest negative consequences of anything we are likely to do.  Every fallen culture throughout history has preceded their fall with family decline.  David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said that “reducing family fragmentation rates by just one percent would save taxpayers $1.1 billion.”  Our impulse-control issues can break this country or build it.  The same applies to our families.

My book, Stress-free Discipline, teaches how to cope with impulse-control issues in both parents and children.

This weekend was a mess with the 4-year-old being sick… he is sort of okay. He was really coughing up phlem last two nights, I didn’t get much sleep… and to top it all off, _______ and I broke up… AGAIN… yesterday afternoon. I think this is the final time. This time I told the boys –

My 6-year-old was devastated and broke down three times in the half hour between my house and his mother’s.  I told her in a text message so she would know what was up – just a complete worthless weekend.

I don’t know really what to say – after four or five times I just figured it best to at least let the kids know. It’s not any fun but they come first in my life and the sooner they get over it the better I think.  I didn’t want to do the same thing I had with my previous girlfriend – just telling them that she’s unavailable.

Oh well, I hope I didn’t scar my oldest for life.

I said,

These are teachable moments:  teach the boys that friends–much as we would like them to be for a lifetime–may self-select out of our circle because of their vastly different values, or by moving away, or having different interests as they grow up…along with examples of what those differences may be.  Ask the boys for reasons and examples to make it real for them, and keep it all interactive.  Use simple sentences, because what I’m telling you is concept-dense.

Everyone is free to make choices, which may be positive or negative in their impact on ourselves or others.

Pain is something God came to earth to heal, and it is caused by sin, a Bible word for selfishness and greed…pray with your eldest that

1. God will heal his hungry heart, and
2. that another person will come into your lives who has interest in you all and willingness to sacrifice time and effort for your benefit.
3. Help him to look for the blessings to come when you submit to God, who allows worldly pain for a purpose.

He is getting old enough to begin defining some important value-laden words such as selfishness (with Bible examples)…Better understanding will shed the light of Christ on that black hole of pain.

Use this format for definitions:  Selfishness is a type of __________ (you fill in the blank:  is it feelings?  attitude resulting in behavior?) with the following characteristics:

• the selfish person cannot see, admit the importance of  other people’s needs,
• a selfish person will not  act on behalf of other people’s needs,
• a selfish person will not consider their feelings, their health or safety, etc.

Print out these definitions and concepts to review with the boys within the next couple of days.  Read about and discuss Abraham’s selfish, fear-based lies re: his wife being his sister–which landed Sarah in painful trouble, and people had to get hurt in order for God to get her out–not to mention her emotional fears and pain.

Pain, then, can be the result of someone else’s sin. Make those connections for the boys: you are translating the world to them.  God’s word translates the world for us throughout our lives.

Pain in this life is the result of sin. Only Christ can heal the hungry heart with that peace that goes beyond our understanding.  God’s forgiveness is the model for our forgiveness.  His Holy Spirit gives us the power we need to be Christ-followers clear through.

Part of pain is the powerlessness of it. Get your children used to the idea that God is the one with the kind of power to heal and save.  We do our best and He does the rest.

Dropping pain at the foot of the cross lets it go with divine help:  use imagery for children by picking up the bag of garbage out of the kitchen and dropping it with them into the dumpster.  Then let them know that just like we are not going to pick up the garbage and bring it back into our lives, we are not going to pick up the polluted garbage of unforgiveness and self-inflicted pain back into our lives.

Use word pictures to explain abstract ideas.  Unforgiveness  festers like splinters not taken out.  Those splinters grow into vast, infected territories of unspoken but acted-out pain.  Satan gains a foothold in those toxic places of the soul.  Explain to the boys what a foothold is in war, and how hard it is to get rid of once an enemy is entrenched.

Toxic places of the soul include the anger we don’t know what to do with socially.  Anger management is an important skill to teach children.

Train them not to bag it up like dysfunctional parents may encourage–”Boys don’t cry” or “It’s nothing:  get over it”.  You’re training the boys in functional anger management.

It’s good to express our fears, frustration, pain and the resulting anger to God (the Psalmists even asked God to “get even” with evil-doers–those are called imprecatory psalms).  Vengence belongs to God–it is not our job to punish.  Our job is to practice clearing our hearts of unforgiveness often, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Searching the Bible for answers can’t start too early for those daily conflicts which can leave invisible, lifelong scars.  Further, if we do not defuse them, they build into pathology–great grief, mental illness, anxiety or worry.

In my experience, the habit of dealing with feelings via the Bible and via thinking compassionately (praying for our “enemies”) can only bring benefits by glorifying God and cleansing and maturing us.

Selfishness is the default answer for all humans.  We don’t have to remain there.  A self-centered relationship or a performance-based relationship will not bring long-term happiness.  A Christ-centered relationship will last the long journey of joyful marriage.

I find that when I am feeling grouchy about–for example–doing (usually house and yard) work when my husband is lounging around watching hours of TV a day,  I need to consider what Christ would have me to do.  I reframe my attitude about doing the work.

Rather than a “poor me, why isn’t he helping on this thing I decided is important now?” attitude with attendant pain, anger, etc, I consider what use Christ is making of the work.  Ideas like, “It’s physically and spiritually therapeutic” come to mind. Also, ideas occur like, “What does Christ think when I have a selfish attitude about my relationship to Him?” …and, “What, exactly am I, a greedy, selfish sinner, entitled to from Him? Does the Master serve the servant? He has reasons I wouldn’t understand if he told them to me.”

Also, in fairness to my husband, if I ask for help he shuts off the entertainment and works with me, and when I flop down exhausted, he takes me out to dinner, etc.  Probably the hardest part about unrealistic expectations is that we recognize them when they’re put on us, but not when we are putting them on others.

What’s easy for me is hard for him, as I explained to our granddaughter when we were foster-parenting her. We do what we do best…further, I need to avoid adding stress on top of what he’s already experiencing in the way of stress. He doesn’t complain, and that lack of complaint makes his stress invisible to me. The adrenals can only take so much before adrenal fatigue sets in for anyone.  We also have to discriminate between essentials and desires that can be put off–maybe forever!

Since I was in grade school, all kinds of new rules were made as soon as someone overstepped the boundaries set by authorities.  Those rules cramped my style, imposed upon my life, and felt oppressive.  I was asked for a hall pass every time I stepped out of the classroom because someone broke the rules about the hall use, smoking in the bathroom, etc.  It was just a fact of life necessary for the maintenance of order in the school.

If I break some sort of driving rules, or even appear to be doing so, I can be sure that I’ll be stopped and asked for my driver’s license.  An officer has the right to put me to a drunk-driver’s test even if my problem is low blood sugar.  I do not call it unfair.  In order for any society to maintain order, some people will experience “unfair” restrictions on their freedom.  This, too, is a fact of life.

When I was managing an apartment complex for five years, the answer to complaints regarding “discrimination” was to treat everyone the same.  I suggest, then, that Arizona put immigrant status on all driver’s licenses, and ask everyone for their license or state-approved identification card at any time they are stopped.  How easy can it get?

Do we have to get our adrenals all stressed over this issue?

Is it true to say that our convenient computers, calculators, and technology short-cuts in general are ways to save ourselves the labor of figuring our change, analyzing our data, etc?  If so, I could argue that achieving the end product without analysis may be a short cut which facilitates our life style without damaging it. We do not need to know how the vegetables were grown and transported to benefit from eating them. 

However, we do need to know how to figure our change in our heads.  That involves abstract thinking: recall, application, analysis, judgment.

Since I came from the punch card era–when computer CPUs took up a whole temperature-controlled room and lots of engineering time–I see that our short cuts can own us. While they are simplifying our thought life in order to find the bottom line sooner, they simplify our learning process.  They dumb us down, setting us up to be willing victims. 

The key question is this: Was the trade-off a good one?  Is it good to merely speed up life without doing the grunge work (basic skill building or spiritual work, for example) of making it a worthwhile life?

The issue, then, as I see it, is that the foundational math concepts and logic skills have somehow been lost in the rush toward functionality.  It is the old battle between the urgent but unimportant against the long term important item which seems like it can wait at the bottom of the priority list. 

Then, horrors, the long term important skills or chores (like building higher order thinking skills or buying disability insurance) suddenly loom large and ugly:  CRISIS MANAGEMENT.  Attached is a little chart I invented which might be useful for priority setting and time management

A simple priority system for you and your child might look like this:

Finding the most important thing to do first: 

List important tasks on the left side of your paper. 

Make five small columns to the right of the list. 

In them, give the task a number from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important.[1] 

It works like this:

Assign points to each column for each task. 

If you’re weak there and really working on planning and scheduling, you may want to assign points for that job like this:  (A) God’s priority 20, (B) Important long term 10, (C) Urgent this week 6, (D) Total points 36.  Leave the priority column blank until the end. 

If you have food management well organized, have plenty in the refrigerator and pantry, and can throw together healthy meals without much effort, you might assign it points like this:  (A) God’s priority 20, (B) Important long term 6, (C) Urgent this week 2, (D) Total points 28.

If you want God to be Number One in your life, your day is ruined if you’re not up early to meet with Him, you’ll probably give that points like this: (A) God’s priority 30 (B) Important long term 10, (C) Urgent this week 2 (D) Total points 42.

Spending birthday money doesn’t look so important now, but you have a burning desire to get to the store while the sale is still on.  Those points might be (A) God’s priority 1, (B) Important long term 3, (C) Urgent this week 10, (D) Total points 14.

What do you need to do in order to overcome that natural laziness which makes you ignorant of life’s challenge and reward?

The problem is that emotional upheaval between parents prevents them from changing or improving their discipline styles.

Feelings are playing ping-pong with their thoughts.  Feelings are in the driver’s seat, not in the back seat.  Feelings are designed by God to support and motivate action after it has been thought through.

After thinking through the problem, getting useful ideas into your head does not mean you have mastered the techniques which save you stress while enhancing your family interdependence.

What does it take to master stress-free techniques?

It takes getting help and practice, using personal reflection and supportive group activities.

Why do people resist change?

Kotter and Schlesinger (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008, 130) offer four basic reasons that people resist change and several methods for overcoming resistance in their article illustrating change in the world of management. The most common reasons they cite for resistance are

1. A desire to keep something of value
2. Misunderstanding of the change and its complications
3. A belief that the change does not make sense
4. A low tolerance for change in general (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008, 131).

If you write down your reasons for not wanting to change your child discipline, you will probably find out that the above four reasons keep reappearing on your list.  Are you willing to look carefully at your reasoning?  Are you uncomfortable enough to make positive change?

How can people overcome their resistance to change?

Couples, like the managers cited in the article, can determine which form of resistance they are facing and choose to overcome it with a number of techniques.

Some of those techniques are: education and communication, participation and involvement, facilitation and support, negotiation and agreement.

This research, in the hands of a sensitive and experienced mentor or counselor, can help guide couples to gradually gain skill in making functional changes in their family dynamic.

Resources:

Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (2008, August). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 86(7/8), 130-139.